Are we doing the right thing?

I wonder if this Occupation is right.  I have never been a witness to a movement like this except through the glass tube that rots our minds.  We, as a generation, have been so far removed from these kinds of demonstrations that we have no idea how to relate.  The demonstrations like this that have happened in this country of late have been covered up with terms like “domestic terrorism” and “anarchism”.  We have seen riots through our televisions, dictators overthrown on documentaries, and heard witness accounts of the terrors that plague the Middle East, but we have not experienced these things ourselves in full.  Even watching the twin towers crumble and fall was something that most of the youth in this country barely remembers. 

So we are left asking for advice from our elders or our mentors; asking for an answer that only we can find for ourselves.  Is this something that we should be doing?  All of our lives we are told to obey the laws; to participate in this great mass consumption; to believe that what our governments and corporations are doing is in our best interest.  We were told to go to college, to take out those student loans and to enslave ourselves with debt.  Yet we have nothing to look forward to.  No jobs are being created; no corporations are building new factories.  We stand at the end of this glorious educational roller coaster with a nicely framed, gilded piece of parchment that states how we have achieved an exceptional understanding of our subjects in our studies, but we don’t have a wall to hang it on.  We learn to be engineers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, technicians, etc. but we end up working at Burger King or McDonald’s.  We learn of all of the advances in a technological society but we will never be able to afford them.

We sit idly by and watch as unemployment climbs and the government is systematically dismantled by psychotic elected officials whose loyalty does not lie to the people who voted them into office.  We are dumbfounded when we learn that the reality of the situation is that they do not care about us, the people who built this great nation.  To them, we are expendable.  We charge too much for our labor.  We cost too much to insure.  We demand too many rights as employees.  How dare you feel as though you deserve a break after only working for a couple of hours!  Who do the women who work at Wal-mart think they are? When did that glorious representation of mass consumerism ever say that they would pay you the same wage as men in similar positions?

 “I don’t have to tell you things are bad.  Everybody knows things are bad.  It’s a depression.  Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job.  The dollar buys a nickels worth, banks are going bust, shop-keepers keep a gun under the counter.  Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.  We know the air is unfit to breathe and food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.  We know things are bad—worse than bad.  They’re crazy.  It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore.  We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms.  Let me have my toaster and my TV and my Steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything.  Just leave us alone.”  Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone.  I want you to get mad!  I don’t want you to protest.  I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write.  I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.  All in know is that first you’ve got to get mad.  You’ve got to say, “I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!”  So I want you to get up now.  I want all of you to get up and out of your chairs.  I want you to get up right now and go to the window.  Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, “I’M MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”  I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell _ “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”  Things have got to change.  But first, you’ve gotta get mad!...  You’ve got to say, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”  Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis.  But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:”I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”—Howard Beale—Network 1976

It is when hearing this quote that I start to believe that this is the right thing to do.  It is when hearing this crazed man cry out to the masses that we do have a worth and we have the right to be angry that I find myself feeling like we are moving in the right direction.  I am as mad as hell, and I did not vote to see all of our hopes and dreams die with a pathetic whimper.  I do not feel like I should have to take this anymore.  I feel as though if I owe allegiance to my country, then my country owes allegiance to me.  I am a citizen, as are most of you, and WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE MAD AS HELL!

We have received the blessings of Michael Moore; Cornel West, Amy Goodman, Keith Olberman, and many others not mentioned and even more from other places around the world that we do not even know about.  We have turned the attention of the entire globe onto the streets of America, in solidarity, together.  We are currently occupying fifty plus cities; all in the financial districts where available (we have yet to occupy Wall Street itself.  The police in riot gear are quite persuasive).  Our numbers are growing every day.   And you are one of us.